Wednesday, September 26, 2001

Mental Health Day #2

Today, I went through a 5 hour meeting, a 2 hour meeting, a 1.5 hour support group I'm running and 1 hour of teaching. You might say, "hm. that's a lot of hours." DAMN SKIPPY that's a lot of hours. Wednesdays are my 12 hour days. But today was a bit excessive. More time spent with administrators than students, and that's never a good thing.

I guess this goes with Pure Joy...I'm taking a Mental Health Day. I think I spoke about Mental Health Days a few months ago, but just in case you're new to the Voodoo, a Mental Health Day is a day that you leave work behind, put on your comfy clothes, and just plain chill because you need a day like that every now and then to keep your head on straight. I don't have anything planned as of yet, but I have some good ideas in mind. Maybe I'll stay home and clean around the house. Maybe, if the weather's nice, I'll go to the beach. Maybe, I'll go kick it somewhere. Who knows.

I've been needing this MHD because life has been treating me kinda rough lately, so this comes at an opportune time.

But today we went through a training for customer service. You might think that's kinda odd since I work at a University. Yes, you're right, but the customer base that I work with are students, and we are always working on ways to improve delivery of service and all that funny human resource talk. At any rate, the training we did today was watch a video that was based, strangely enough, on the management and customer service of Pikes Place Fish Market. Yes, that one in Seattle. Where they chuck fishes at you. The fellas that work there have an interesting outlook on things, so it was cool to see how they handled working in an environment that was fast-paced and heavy with the interaction with the public.

It came down to four things: 1) play; 2) make their day; 3) be there, and 4) choose your attitude. If you've ever seen these dudes, you'd know that they have a lot of fun doing what they do. They are well known for their antics behind the counter and in front of the counter, so that's what play means. You can have fun at work. I do, all the time, it's the business end that drags, but in the long run it's a great place to be. Make Their Day is kinda obvious, but as someone who works with students constantly, they are always seeking something, an answer, a resource, etc., so I'm there to provide that for them. And doing that is not all that hard. Being There refers to being present for the person you're attending to, not drifting off to another person, thought or action. It means a lot to students to be there for them in all ways, so it's easy to see how this is rewarding. Finally, Choose your Attitude is akin to either you can be an asshole or you can be a kind person. You have made a choice on how to act. It's not something that's out of your control. Cha-ching.

You know, this all makes sense, doesn't it?

These four elements are things that I do on a regular basis, often without thinking about things. These are natural behaviors and that's why I think my workplace has been a very popular place - we try to pass down those things to our students, and in turn they pass it to others. It's an effective marketing tool. Being friendly. Sheesh! What's kinda sad is that other folks don't even have an inkling of how to do these things. I had some colleagues who were perplexed. How do we do this in our office? How do we get some of our less interactive people to buy into these elements? Scary, huh.

Well, that's the state of corporations, and make no doubt, universities are corporations complete with the bottom line. I love where I work, but if you can't even figure out how to be good to each other and to your clients, what's wrong with you?

Off to Mental Health Land,
Voodoo

posted by Voodoo Child @ 10:38:00 PM